Posted on 06/10/2013 1:17:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, is still working on his explanation for why he told Senator Ron Wyden in March that the NSA does not wittingly "collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans." As we now know, the NSA does precisely that — metadata (but not content) from pretty much every phone call made in America is collected and stored.
On Thursday, Clapper claimed, "What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens' e-mails. I stand by that." Of course, that's not what he said, and everyone knows it, because video. So now Clapper says that he simply has a different definition of collect than most humans, and this defniition allowed him to answer in the "least untruthful manner." He admits that this explanation is probably "too cute by half."
ANDREA MITCHELL: Senator Wyden made quite a lot out of your exchange with him last March during the hearings. Can you explain what you meant when you said that there was not data collection on millions of Americans?
JAMES CLAPPER: First-- as I said, I have great respect for Senator Wyden. I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked-- "When are you going to start-- stop beating your wife" kind of question, which is meaning not-- answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no. And again, to go back to my metaphor. What I was thinking of is looking at the Dewey Decimal numbers-- of those books in that metaphorical library-- to me, collection of U.S. persons' data would mean taking the book off the shelf and opening it up and reading it.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Taking the contents?
JAMES CLAPPER: Exactly. That's what I meant. Now--
ANDREA MITCHELL: You did not mean archiving the telephone numbers? JAMES CLAPPER: No.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Let me ask you about the content--
JAMES CLAPPER: And this has to do with of course somewhat of a semantic, perhaps some would say too-- too cute by half. But it is-- there are honest differences on the semantics of what-- when someone says "collection" to me, that has a specific meaning, which may have a different meaning to him.
Andrea Mitchell: What’s your favorite color?
Director Clapper: Plaid.
AM: Favorite ice cream?
DC: Neapolitan.
AM: I’m throwing you softballs, but I get the feeling those aren’t the least untruthful answers.
DC: You can’t handle the truth hatchetface.
Excellent point . I’m a golden retrieve in this area but have been online since the days of Commodore 64’s in the 80’s and understand enough to know this is waaaay out of hand.
Plus I read Vince Flynn and Tom Clancy;)
He should have just said he had his fingers crossed, so it doesn’t count.
Where I come from testifying in the least untruthful manner is called perjury.
What’s he’s really saying that since any answer he gave other than “no” would be construed as a yes (even if he asked for a 5 minutes to have the attorneys discuss the matter) he decided to just lie and say no.
Untruth ? Doubleplusungood!
...”The outsourcing plan was finalized in 2000 by a special NSA Advisory Board set up to determine the agency’s future and codified in a secret report written by a then-obscure intelligence officer named James Clapper. “Clapper did a one-man study for the NSA Advisory Board,” recalls Ed Loomis, a 40-year NSA veteran who, along with Binney and two others, blew the whistle on corporate corruption at the NSA.
“His recommendation was that NSA acquire its internet capabilities from the private sector. The idea was, the private sector had the capability and we at NSA didn’t need to reinvent the wheel.”
Hayden, who was the NSA director at the time, “put a lot of trust in the private sector in the private sector, and a lot of trust in Clapper, because Clapper was his mentor,” added Loomis. And once he got approval, “he was hell-bent on privatization and nothing was going to derail that.” Clapper is now President Obama’s director of national intelligence, and has denounced the Guardian leaks as “reprehensible.”?...
http://mediachecker.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/meet-some-of-the-contractors-who-analyze-your-personal-data/
Last time I checked a lie is an “untruth”. Effing a$$holes.
“LEAST UNTRUTHFUL”?! What the Heck does that mean, the smallest lie?
I know!!!! WTF!!!
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